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The About Visual Basic
Guide to the VB.NET Books

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The About Visual Basic
ADO Tutorial Series

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The About Visual Basic
Logic and Numbers Series

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Essential Learning Topics

07/07/03 - Manifestly Xtra Pretty Forms
Windows XP provides a whole new way to draw the common controls used in Visual Basic programs. This article explains how to use a manifest to add XP formatting to your forms and components in both VB .NET and VB 6. And the article also show you more about how it works.

06/14/03 - Regional Issues
The Windows Form Designer generated code "Region" and Regions themselves are new features in VB .NET. A lot of processing that was unavailable to your VB 6 code is right there where you can see it -- and change it if you want to -- in VB .NET. The fact that all of your code is there and available to you as a programmer is one of the biggest differences between VB .NET and VB 6. Here's a brief introduction to some of the things you will find in the VB .NET Region.

02/01/03 - Professional Visual Basic 6 2003
Wrox introduces a new VB 6 Resources book for 2003 !!
Since the first day, VB 6 has been The People's Choice in the About Visual Basic poll and has pretty much swamped VB.NET. So About Visual Basic has reviewed this new VB 6 book for your reading and learning pleasure.

01/25/03 - WebZinc - Program the Web with VB
Grab information from a Web page, retrieve data about a Web page, search any search engine, fill out a Web form, and more. A review of the new version 2 of this program written for .NET!

01/17/03 - Complete, Great, and (YES!) Low Cost
A review of Visual Basic .NET Complete
by the Editors and Writers of Sybex Books (April, 2002 - List Price: $19.99)

01/09/03 - More Customizing VB.NET Controls
With "Norseman" and Dale Lehman
Norseman shows how to really customize a control!

12/26/02 - Getting Your System Out
Packaging, Installing, and Deploying VB Systems
With Peter Zilahy Ingerman

12/26/02 - Update! SharpDevelop
Update! SharpDevelop (did I mention, free !) keeps getting better!

12/19/02 - MustInherit and NotInheritable in VB.NET
What these new class modifiers mean in VB.NET

12/12/02 - A First Introduction to VB.NET Controls
Create A Custom Colored Check Box!

12/01/02 - The VB.NET Upgrade Wizard
Need To Upgrade VB 6 to VB.NET? Consider This First!

10/30/02 - A Guide to the Win32 API
Here's a better guide to the Windows API

10/16/02 - Setting Access Properties From VB
An About Visual Basic member asks how to set properties for Microsoft Access fields.

09/30/02 - Programming The Tic Tac Toe Game
Building a simple game program can teach you a lot about programming. Try this one out.

09/08/02 - VB – Bringing .NET Programming To You
Find out where VB fits in Microsoft’s .NET technology!

03/15/03 - Calculating a Contrasting Color Code
The first article in a series on Logic and Numbers. Hexadecimal arithmatic, symbolic logic, and programming methodology are all part of an an attempt to write a program to calculate a contrasting color code. This article really shows why it's important to understand logic and numbers. The next two articles cover the answers.

03/22/03 - Symbolic Logic
The second article in a series on Logic and Numbers. Symbolic Logic is a fundamental skill that programmers need. Here's an introduction with extra credit features demonstrating Venn Diagrams and Karnaugh Maps.

03/29/03 - Computer Number Systems
The third article in a series on Logic and Numbers. An exploration of Hexadecimal, Octal, Binary as well as the familiar Decimal numbers that are fundamental parts of a programmer's knowledge toolkit.

This series emphasizes ADO .NET, Microsoft's new object oriented data access technology for the .NET Framework, from the ground up - slowly and carefully. The series is presented in "byte sized" articles rather than trying to tell the story all at once.

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About.com also has a database focused site at databases.about.com. This series will focus on the VB .NET language aspects of ADO .NET. Go to About Databases for more information 'About' building and using databases.

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04/12/03 - Part 1 - Using ADO .NET - First Principles
A broad brush view of the important objects in ADO .NET, focusing on the critically important DataSet object and the new XML capability of ADO .NET.

05/03/03 - Part 2 - Using ADO .NET - Access and OleDB
We learn how to use ADO .NET with Access and VB .NET in read only mode using a very simple Access database that you create as part of the tutorial.

05/10/03 - Part 3 - Using ADO .NET - Using Wizards
Using the same Access database that was created in Part 2 of the series, we use the Wizards and "bound controls" to create a program this time. To make the points crystal clear, the same program from Part 2 is developed.

05/17/03 - Part 4 - Using ADO .NET - Changing Databases
Up to this point, all the programs have used information from a database in "read only" mode. This time, we use the ADO .NET wizards - and some of our own code - to change the database.

05/24/03 - Part 5 - Using ADO .NET - More DB Updating
One of the reasons why Microsoft uses so many wizards is that there are simply so many parameters and options to keep track of. But in this installment of the About Visual Basic ADO .NET tutorial, we confront the complexity head on and examine how to program against the ADO .NET objects directly!

05/31/03 - ADO .NET Update to the Guide to the VB .NET Books

The Guide to the VB.NET Books
Your money is too precious to waste on a book that doesn't work for you. Here's my personal review of the VB.NET books!

Learn Visual Basic
If you're new to Visual Basic, or even new to programming, this is the place! Visual Basic from the very ground up will be explained.

Learn VB 6
Although VB.NET is gaining ground fast, VB 6 remains the most popular programming environment in the entire history of the world! But even if it wasn't as great as it is, it's still the best place to start learning about programming!

Learn VB .NET
.NET is the most important change for Microsoft Developers since Windows. And maybe even more important than that. It sounds like an overstatement, but it's not. VB .NET now takes it's place as a fully object oriented language capable of doing any kind of system from a standalone recipie file to a multilevel, multithreaded, network based, database driven, transaction oriented, high security, high efficiency, non-stop corporate critical application. (Whew!)

This tutorial gets you started right from the ground level. It's written people new to programming and covers the basics.

Learn ASP
Does your web page lack action? Does it just sit there while everybody else's page takes names and kicks assets? This page shows you how to activate your page with Visual Basic and Active Server Pages.